1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a camera control system arranged to permit one or a plurality of persons to perform a remote operation on one or a plurality of cameras and to be usable, for example, for a video conference system, a surveillance camera system, etc.
2. Description of Related Art
In observing images outputted from a plurality of cameras connected to a network in a surveillance camera system, for example, it has been practiced to manually switch the display of images outputted from these cameras from one camera over to another on the side of a client.
However, it is very important for surveillance camera systems or the like in general to keep constant watch over the images picked up by cameras. Therefore, the manual switching of image displays under surveillance from the image output of one camera over to that of another camera has been extremely troublesome.
In view of the above-stated problem of the prior art, it is an object of the invention to provide a camera control system arranged to automatically switch the display of the image output of one camera over to that of another camera at suitable intervals and also to automatically control the image pickup direction of each of cameras.
It is another object of the invention to provide a camera control system arranged to appositely carry out control, in the event of occurrence of an error due to service interruption of a network line or due to some malfunction of a camera, by informing a client of the error while cameras are under automatic operation control.
To attain at least one of the above objects, in accordance with one aspect of the invention, there is provided a camera control system capable of controlling a plurality of video cameras, which comprises video camera setting means for setting, from among the plurality of video cameras, a plurality of video cameras to be controlled, video camera storing means for storing information on the video cameras set by the video camera setting means, switching means for switching over, at intervals of a predetermined period of time, display of images picked up by the video cameras stored in the video camera storing means, and display means for displaying an image picked up by each of the video cameras selected by the switching means.
To attain at least one of the above objects, in accordance with another aspect of the invention, there is provided a control method for a camera control system capable of controlling a plurality of video cameras, which comprises a video camera setting step of setting, from among the plurality of video cameras, a plurality of video cameras to be controlled, a video camera storing step of storing information on the video cameras set by the video camera setting step, a switching step of switching over, at intervals of a predetermined period of time, display of images picked up by the video cameras stored by the video camera storing step, and a displaying step of displaying an image picked up by each of the video cameras selected by the switching step.
To attain at least one of the above objects, in accordance with a further aspect of the invention, there is provided a storage medium which stores therein a program for executing control over a camera control system capable of controlling a plurality of video cameras, the program comprising processes of setting, from among the plurality of video cameras, a plurality of video cameras to be controlled, storing information on the video cameras set, switching over, at intervals of a predetermined period of time, display of images picked up by the video cameras stored, and displaying an image picked up by each of the video cameras selected.